Chapter 73: Merman Dock

Cold Stone was walking along the road when he felt his foot step on empty air; once he steadied himself and looked up again, he found his surroundings had changed.

What lay before him was no longer a secluded path, but a dilapidated dock.

Looking back, behind him was endless darkness—where was the road he had come by?

He stared at the dock, his face blank with confusion.

Oh my god, where the hell did that one step dump me off to?

Is this still inside Briver Town?

The dock was deathly silent; the only answer he got was the surging waves.

He swallowed a mouthful of saliva; he seemed to have underestimated this C-rank dungeon that had only just appeared.

Here comes a big one.

He tossed the fish in his hand into his inventory space, drew out his two-meter-long pale-blue metal staff, and then began observing the dock.

The wood used to build the dock was fairly old; eroded by sea wind and seawater, it had lost its hardness, feeling soft underfoot—he could sense the wood was saturated with moisture.

He sniffed; besides the briny smell of seawater, there was a heavy fishy stench, the musty smell of rotting wood, and the smell of blood.

The source of the blood smell was the rotting wood beneath his feet.

He channeled energy into his staff; the gem at its tip emitted light, illuminating the surroundings.

By that light, he saw that what the planks had soaked up was no moisture at all—it was clearly fresh blood!

With every step he took, red blood seeped out from the gaps between the planks.

He wedged the spiked tail end of his staff into a gap between the planks and pried upward.

The rotten plank was pried open easily; from the broken hole, a single round, rolling eye was revealed.

Sensing the light, the eyeball swiveled, its pupil fixing on Cold Stone.

Even with all his experience, Cold Stone was startled by the sudden sight, giving a visible jump.

After the initial fright, he quickly calmed down and looked again at the eye beneath the plank.

He realized it was not a human eye, but a fish's eye.

Plop!

The next moment, the fish that had been staring at him leapt out of the hole and landed heavily on the wooden dock.

With the first fish's leap, more and more eyes began emerging from within the pit.

Beneath the dock's floor, as if connected to some fish pit, fish leapt out of the hole one after another, seemingly without end.

Every fish that leapt from the pit would hop, one bounce at a time, toward the sea.

The very first fish to emerge was now only a step away from the dock's edge.

Just as it made its final leap, a large hand covered in scales shot up from beneath the sea surface and seized the airborne fish in one grab.

An alley-oop, followed by a slam-dunk.

A merman over three meters tall burst from the water and swallowed the fish it had caught in a single gulp.

Cold Stone stared at the merman before him, baring his teeth.

How come this merman doesn't look like the ones he saw as a kid?

Aren't mermaids supposed to have human upper bodies and fish tails?

How come this one has a freaking fish head and human legs?

Was what he saw before wrong?

Whatever, since a monster spawned, might as well take it out while I'm at it.

Cold Stone chanted an incantation; the energy within his body transformed into light that surged forth, coalescing at the tip of his staff into a three-meter-long blade of light.

He charged forward, and with a flick of the light blade in his hand, sliced off one of the merman's claws on the spot.

Then he reversed his grip and brought the blade down, severing the merman's other claw.

"Hey, merman, can you understand speech?"

The merman opened its mouth and roared, the sound wave deafening.

Cold Stone clapped one hand over his ear and swung his staff with the other, using the light blade to chop off the merman's head.

Looks like communication isn't happening.

He crouched down and began examining the merman's corpse.

The merman's flesh was dense, its build burly—roughly the stats of a level twelve or thirteen creature.

As an elite monster, it barely counted as lower-tier in a C-rank dungeon, posing him no threat at all. If they appeared in swarms, they could give him some trouble.

He had been careless before; the Quiet Town dungeon had some tricks, but not many.

Before Cold Stone could cut open the merman's body to further study what kind of monster it was, countless shadows surfaced beneath the sea around the dock.

Immediately after, a string of mermen leapt from the sea like firecrackers—crackling and popping—landing on the deck, staring fixedly at Cold Stone.

Cold Stone swallowed a mouthful of saliva and slapped himself across the face.

Jinx mouth—say something and it happens.

He swept a glance around and found there were no fewer than twenty mermen.

A mere twenty fish-head freaks think they can take down Cold Stone?

Cold Stone snorted coldly, and a blade of light coalesced in his hand once more.

Half an hour later, Cold Stone, wounded all over, raised his staff—its light blade long gone—and smashed the last merman's head to pieces with a vicious blow.

He was so exhausted he dropped his butt onto the ground; this time it should finally be over, right?

"Wooo!"

!

A low horn sounded from afar, followed by the sound of countless oars slapping the waves.

Cold Stone gazed into the distance and saw a fleet of seven or eight medium wooden ships racing toward the dock at full speed.

Each wooden ship carried at least twenty fully armed fishmen.

At the same moment, a bronze statue materialized out of thin air. The statue stared at Cold Stone, and Cold Stone felt a chill run down his back.

Damn—it's a skill check!

He tried to summon his will to resist, but it was already too late. A "Sinner" status had appeared on his attribute panel, weakening all his stats by one-fifth.

Watching the fishman fleet that had already reached shore, despair welled up in Cold Stone's heart.

At the same moment, outside the instance.

Wu Chang's true self, who had been staking out Breever Port, opened his eyes and looked at the "Life-Sized Bronze Statue of Count Jermain" built to commemorate the port's opening.

Just now, a sudden flash of light had glimmered on the Count's bronze statue.

The next instant, a pale-red wisp of resentment flickered across the statue.

Although the resentment vanished extremely fast, it was still spotted by Wu Chang, who had long been staking out this spot.

Borrowing Cold Stone's resentment, he saw everything that had happened at the fishman dock.

A few minutes later, Wu Chang's true self took one last look at the bronze statue, and his body faded into the darkness.

Overall, tonight's experiment was a success.

He had verified the intelligence left by the previous mailman—Breever Town really did have an inner world.

Verifying this piece of intelligence was not an unnecessary move on his part.

For Wu Chang, only intelligence generated from a player's resentment after death was completely trustworthy intelligence.

The intelligence left by the previous mailman was all text recorded in letters.

Setting aside whether there were codes and slang hidden inside, even without those hidden traps, no one could be certain whether the intelligence recorded within was genuine.

Using Cold Stone as his little white mouse, he had not only verified the existence of the inner world, but also confirmed another of his guesses.

Breever's outer world and inner world were not completely independent; there was some kind of special connection between them.

This connection was very likely linked through the statue in the inner world.

Back then, Martie had insisted on executing the previous mailman beneath the bronze statue, which had already drawn his attention.

After Cold Stone was drawn into the inner world, the Count's bronze statue on the outer-world dock showed an abnormal reaction, thoroughly confirming this guess.

As for the wisp of resentment that flickered across the statue, that was purely an unexpected bonus.

One person provided so much information—Brother Cold Stone, you died a worthwhile death, a glorious death!

Wu Chang could swear that he only used Cold Stone as his little white mouse because Cold Stone was strong enough to test out enough things about the instance.

It was absolutely not because he was petty and wanted to get back at those three bastards on the beach who tried to use them as cannon fodder and called him a small fry.

He never held grudges.

Just as Wu Chang finished gathering intelligence and prepared to leave, a whistle sounded across the sea, and a red steamship bearing the post office's emblem steamed into the port.

The town's mail had arrived.

(End of chapter)